Thriving on a Riff Jazz and Blues Influences in African American Literature and Film

"Jazz And Blues Influences in African American Literature And Film"

From the Harlem Renaissance to the present, African American writers have drawn on the rich heritage of jazz and blues, transforming musical forms into the written word. In this companion volume to The Hearing Eye, distinguished contributors ranging from Bertram Ashe to Steven C. Tracy explore the musical influence on such writers as Sterling Brown, J.J. Phillips, Paul Beatty, and Nathaniel Mackey. Here, too, are Graham Lock's engaging interviews with contemporary poets Michael S. Harper and Jayne Cortez, along with studies of the performing self, in Krin Gabbard's account of Miles Davis and John Gennari's investigation of fictional and factual versions of Charlie Parker. The book also looks at African Americans in and on film, from blackface minstrelsy to the efforts of Duke Ellington and John Lewis to rescue jazz from its stereotyping in Hollywood film scores as a signal for sleaze and criminality. Concluding with a proposal by Michael Jarrett for a new model of artistic influence, Thriving on a Riff makes the case for the seminal cross-cultural role of jazz and blues.

1 - "You Ain't Got to Be Black to beBlack": Music, Race Consciousness, and Identity in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Mojo Hand
2 - Blackface Minstelstry and Jazz Signification in Hollywood's Early Sound Era
3 - "Thanks, Jack, for That": The 'Strange Legacies' of Sterling Brown
4 - Songlines: An Interview with Michael S. Harper
5 - Synthesizing the Hoodoo of Voodoo: The Music as [Dis]embodied Hero in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo
6 - Paul Beatty's "White Boy Shuffle" Blues: Jazz Poetry, John Coltrane, and the Post-Soul Aesthetic
7 - Giving Voice: An Interview with Jayne Cortez
8 - "Out of this World": Music and Spirit in the Writings of Nathaniel Macket and Amiri Baraka
9 - Blaxsploitation Bird: Ross Russell's Pulp Addiction
10 - The Many Faces of Miles Davis
11 - "A Rebus of Democratic Slants and Angles": the Have and Have Not, Racial Representation and Musical Performance in a Democracy at War
12 - "No Brotherly Love": Hollywood Jazz, Racial Prejudice and John Lewis's Score for Odds Against Tomorrow
13 - Anatomy of a Movie: Duke Ellington and 1950s Film Scoring
14 - Jumping Tracks: The Path of Conduction

Graham Lock is a freelance writer, Special Lecturer in American Music, University of Nottingham, and author, Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music (Quartet, 1988), Chasing the Vibration: Meetings with Creative Musicians (Stride, 1994), and Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington and Anthony Braxton (Duke, 1999), and editor, Mixtery: A Festschrift for Anthony Braxton (Stride, 1995). David Murray is Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham, and author, Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Early Indian-White Exchanges (Massachusetts UP, 2000), Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts (Indiana UP, 1992), and Matter, Magic and Spirit: Representing Indian and African American Belief (Pennsylvania UP, 2007).